Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life

Neil Strauss, former Rolling Stones and New York Times music critic, author of several best-selling books, including The Game, has written a personal story of survival preparedness. He got a second passport (St. Kitts), learned to shoot, make a fire, cook outdoors, to ride a motorcycle, to fight, to use a knife, to survive outdoors, emergency medicine, flight lessons, lock-picking, etc.

It's a personal, very well written a page-turner - I spent several hours last night devouring it. The PDF version can be found on-line but I will likely buy a hard copy since I found it so well written and may want to pass it around to friends.

You'll be surprised. He learned all these skills but ended up choosing to become a more integral part of the community he lives in instead - in Los Angeles County - serving as a civilian emergency responder.

From the Amazon.com review:"After the last few years of violence and terror, of ethnic and religious hatred, of tsunamis and hurricanes–and now of world financial meltdown–Strauss, like most of his generation, came to the sobering realization that, even in America, anything can happen. But rather than watch helplessly, he decided to do something about it. And so he spent three years traveling through a country that's lost its sense of safety, equipping himself with the tools necessary to save himself and his loved ones from an uncertain future.

"With the same quick wit and eye for cultural trends that marked The Game, The Dirt, and How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, Emergency traces Neil's white-knuckled journey through today's heart of darkness, as he sets out to move his life offshore, test his skills in the wild, and remake himself as a gun-toting, plane-flying, government-defying survivor. It's a tale of paranoid fantasies and crippling doubts, of shady lawyers and dangerous cult leaders, of billionaire gun nuts and survivalist superheroes, of weirdos, heroes, and ordinary citizens going off the grid."